TO ALL FIDIC MEMBER ASSOCIATIONS

Ladies and Gentlemen,
General Remarks to ISO/CD2 9001:2000 by FIDIC
These comments to the second draft (cd2) of the new iso 9001 standard were submitted by the FIDIC quality management committee to the ISO technical commiteee responsible for drafting the new iso 9000 family of standards.

FIDIC has chosen to comment on CD2 in broader terms and highlight some areas, where some difficulties in the interpretation of the standard in terms of engineering consultancy services may be encountered.

Another major improvement is the requirements to communication both internally and with the customer.

It is also an improvement that resource management has obtained a separate chapter in the standard. This is good start, but should be further elaborated, see section 3.3 of this note.

Further, FIDIC welcomes the compatibility between the quality management system standard and the environmental management system standard.

These are all major achievements!

3.2 Management Responsibility
Project management is essential when managing organisations providing prototyping products, such as common in the construction sector including consulting engineering. Project management could be considered to be a subset of process management, because project teams need to be controlled, continually approved and prevented from performing nonconformity by the line management of the organisation. At the same time project management undertakes, for the specific project, management responsibilities.

Project management could also be defined as 'temporary management', because project teams are formed to solve a specific task. When the objectives are achieved, the project organisation is dissolved.

This way of organising a company has certain implications in terms of 'management responsibility', and quality objectives, customer requirements, legal requirements and to a certain degree planning are all project specific.

Another aspect is that project teams may comprise personnel from more than one organisation, which complicates the split of responsibility between the line management and the project management.

FIDIC recommends that chapter 5 of CD2 also covers project organisations or temporary organisations in general. This will facilitate the use of the standard within all organisations where temporary organisations are an integrated part of the organisation.

It should be noted that the split in two organisational structures - line organisation and project organisation - might influence other sections than 5 in the CD2.

3.3 Resource Management
Services provided by a knowledge-based service company highly depend on the competence, knowledge, experience, motivation etc. of each and every employee, and of the ability of the employees to work in teams. The human resource and the availability of information and knowledge are the single most important assets to improve the quality and to prevent nonconformity within a knowledge-based company.

Further, the ability of the organisation to attach the right people to the right project is vital for meeting customer requirements, continual improvement and prevention of nonconformity.

In a knowledge-based service company the raw material is information, and the end product is value-added information.

In the future, the above mentioned aspects will be important issues for all companies, not only knowledge-based service companies.

To obtain the primary objective of a quality management system, FIDIC recommends that more emphasis be placed on resource management.

3.4 Product and/or Service Realisation
In section 7.3.1 of CD2 it is stated that 'The organisation shall plan and control design and/or development of the product and /or service.' For a consultancy, where the product is design, this means that 'the design of the design' shall be planned and controlled according to the requirements in section 7.3 Design and development, which includes such activities as review, verification, validation and control of changes. But the product, i.e. the design itself, shall be covered by the requirements in section 7.5 Production and service operations, which does not include the above mentioned elements.

If , however, you have a turnkey contractor to perform both the design of the facility and the construction, nobody will by in doubt that design is covered by 7.3 Design and development and the construction activities by 7.5 Production and service operations.

It does not appear logical that the same process shall be covered by different requirements depending of how the work contractually is divided.

Further, the process of providing engineering consultancy services is often characterised by:

• the number of possibilities/proposals decreases at the same time as the detailing increases
• customer requirements are developed/derived by the consultant, because the consultant by nature possesses the competence (that may be the reason the customer asked for assistance from a consultant)
• the customer is directly involved in taking decisions during the process of providing the service
• the process of providing consultancy service is by nature iterative

The above mentioned aspects lead to situations where strict adherence to the requirements of the standard will not contribute to fulfilling the objectives of the standard. FIDIC appreciates that it may be difficult to formulate requirements, which cover all possible situations. If it is not possible to meet the needs outlined above, an interpretation e.g. in a sectorial guidance document, which fulfils the spirit in the standard and not the standard literally could be the answer.

Section 7.4 covers purchasing. In several business sectors and certainly within the construction sector it is common to form consortiums, when huge and complicated projects shall be commissioned. Selection of the right collaboration partner is paramount to meet customer requirements. FIDIC will recommend TC 176 to consider including this topic in the standard.

In section 7.6 it is stated that measuring and monitoring devices shall be controlled, calibrated and maintained to demonstrate conformance of product and/or service to specified requirements. Within our profession measuring devices are normally used to create the input for performing the service - not to demonstrate conformance. Strictly speaking such equipment is not covered by the standard. However, it is still very important that the equipment is controlled, calibrated and maintained, otherwise the input may be wrong and consequently all the derived activities.

Tonny Jensen
Chairman of FIDIC's Quality Management Committee
Copenhagen, Denmark
June 1999